Gathering Workshops as Impetus for Huge Transformation
By Sue Regen
As I browsed through the workshop offerings in the 2002 Gathering program, one of them brought me up short. It was titled, "Forgiveness as a Spiritual Practice." I was struggling with a family relationship that had led me to feel angry, resentful, and frustrated for over ten years. I was in deep pain at the time I read the workshop description. Something inside me reached out and said, "You need to take this workshop badly. Do it!"
When I entered the workshop room in July, the "baggage" I was carrying included a long list of grievances, many stories of victimhood, and simmering resentment. With the help of the workshop leader, Betsy Griscom, I quickly realized that I had it all wrong, that I was a major factor, if not the factor, in my unhappiness. With the help of other participants, I began to analyze what I was doing to cause pain and how I could start moving to a new place. The definition of forgiveness that we were using is: Forgiveness is something I choose to do within myself, so I can go back (or forward) into relationships with love.
Each day, after the morning workshop, I excitedly shared with my husband what I had learned and began tentatively practicing some new ways of looking at life. I did not yet realize how this workshop was going to be the impetus for a huge transformation in my life.
Through the rest of the summer and fall, I kept practicing tools and techniques I had learned for doing forgiveness work. I looked for ways to share the work and to learn from and with others. I offered one hour worship sharing sessions on forgiveness at my meeting. Friends and mentors gave me encouragement and new things to try. Books on forgiveness started showing up in my life and on my reading list.
I even had a chance to share what I had learned about forgiveness with the Quaker worship group (under the care of Rochester Friends Meeting) in Attica, a maximum security prison in New York State. I offered a Friday evening and much of Saturday workshop to inmates. I was astonished and deeply moved by their responses to the forgiveness work and their willingness to engage in it. I learned some more!
When Betsy died, I was led to go deeper into the work and to begin offering more workshops. Over the next few years, my meeting took this work under its care as one of several ministries it supports. I began to travel, offering workshops not only in my meeting, but in several others around the country. The meeting appointed a support committee for the work, which supports me, raises up questions or concerns, and helps me to stay grounded in Spirit. New York Yearly Meeting endorsed a travel minute that my meeting had approved. Some of the places where I've given the forgiveness workshop include: Pendle Hill, Ben Lomond Quaker Center, at Gathering and the Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology for the past four years, Attica Correctional Facility, and soon at Woolman Hill Center.
I have been blessed to witness many people engaging in forgiveness work and making significant changes in their lives. Forgiveness has the power to bring great healing and peace, to transform lives. And yes, the family relationship that motivated me to start this journey has also undergone a healing transformation. I am deeply grateful that I was led to take the 2002 Gathering workshop on "Forgiveness as a Spiritual Practice!"
Sue Regen is a member of Rochester Friends Meeting in New York. She serves FGG as a volunteer for the Traveling Ministries Program, as clerk of the Development Committee, and as assistant presiding clerk.
